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Even if things like SWATing and more direct attempts to kill people over speech are occasionally practiced, I would say that the vast majority of cases of people talking about encroachments of free speech online is the confused masses crying wolf over and over again. As part of my work, I ended up meeting a man in his 70's who was hardcore MAGA, and he told me that he thought Elon Musk had done more for free speech than anyone alive today.
And don't get me wrong. I'm genuinely happy Elon Musk bought Twitter/X, because I do think it had a positive effect on the quality of societal debate, but I think it is silly to suggest that he did anything to free speech one way or the other.
Far too often, the signal of genuinely worrying encroachments on free speech like the Biden government sending messages to large social media sites asking them to take certain posts down during COVID, or Donald Trump asking universities for control of hiring and firing practices, are drowned out by nothingburgers like "Person X got banned from Platform Y", which almost definitionally cannot have an effect on free speech one way or another.
Like, does anyone believe that Elijah Lovejoy's abolitionist beliefs didn't effectively blacklist him from writing articles in mainstream newspapers? A particular print shop is absolutely allowed to say, "Sorry Mr. Lovejoy, we won't publish your extreme beliefs." So too, a particular website is allowed to say, "Sorry, we don't allow that kind of talk here."
The thing that is killing societal debate is the fact that people are unserious and uncurious. They don't seek out opposing viewpoints, and they double down on dogmatic thinking that leaves no room for debate. They don't care about what is true, they only care about wielding power against their political enemies. And sadly, I think this kind of uncurious thinking is taking root on both sides of the political aisle. I respect genuinely independent thinkers who come to unique positions by following the evidence come what may, but they are a vanishingly small portion of the population.
Biden retaliated against Elon Musk (via capricious investigations of his other companies, fraudulent revocations of subsidies, etc.) for allowing the deplorables back onto Twitter. Musk lost ~$50 billion in net worth from that. If the COVID issue implicated free speech, I think this (the threat, implicit or explicit, of which we have to assume was behind a lot of the deplatforming by other social media and by pre-Musk Twitter) clearly does too. Of course, I'll also note that given the massive vibe shift from uncensoring Twitter, SJ's consensus-astroturfing operation does seem to have been quite successful until then; even had the US government not been involved, that does really seem like an instance of the problem free speech attempts to fix.
Also, missed this when writing my other reply:
Do note that some (though not all) of that niche fetish erotica is illegal in at least some non-US Western jurisdictions. Those laws are bad, I break them, and I want them repealed, but it does somewhat complicate the matter.
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And he's right. All the rest were willing to censor, and censor heavily, on behalf of the deep state.
Except it did, because this was a coordinated, partisan, ideologically biased, cross-platform censorship system which was encouraged and directed by parts of the government.
Even Grok doesn't believe that claptrap. Elon Musk is just as willing to censor for the government as all the other big tech CEO's, he just talks a better game about it.
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